Government to harmonise laws to protect intellectual property right

Accra, Nov. 25, GNA - The Ministry of Trade and Industry is in the process of building a legislative regime to harmonise laws on Intellectual Property in Ghana. Mr Mahama Ayariga, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry on Thursday who made this known in Accra said the move would make monitoring of Intellectual Property Rights much easier and eliminate counterfeiting and piracy.

Mr Ayariga who was addressing participants at the opening session of a National Anti-Counterfeiting and Anti-Piracy Workshop in Accra said the selfishness of perpetrators of the crime had led to major losses in the country's manufacturing industries thus affecting jobs. The workshop was aimed at building a national consensus against major anti-counterfeiting and anti-piracy stakeholders in Ghana and to formulate strategic actions to combat the importation, distribution and sale of fake goods, focusing on legal and regulatory measures and on institutional measures.

He blamed the current boom in the counterfeit and piracy industries on the absence of a legislation and strong consumer awareness on the effects and dangers of the practice, lack of technology to produce packaging that could not be counterfeited or pirated and sluggish enforcement of laws and prosecution of offenders of the illicit trade. Mr Ayariga reminded customers and patrons of such illicit trades that their actions were a major contributing factor of the massive and current unemployment situation in the country as well as a potential factor to destroy the future of children in the country as such activities kept widening the job gap instead of closing it up. He explained that Intellectual Property Rights which had been designed to protect the sole right of originators of artistic and other creative works was very important to reward such inventors for their time, research and investments. Mr Ayariga said public patronage of cheap counterfeiting and pirated products could therefore destroy and discourage creativity, originality and cause revenue and employment losses in the nation's economy. He noted that the situation became more dangerous and worrying when it involved pharmaceutical products, which might be a contributory factor to drug resistance and called for stronger collaboration and monitoring between stakeholders, civil society organisations and manufacturers to thwart the growing efforts of foreign companies to use Ghana as their dumping grounds. Mr Ayariga appealed to the public to eschew patronage of counterfeit and pirated products by critically examining the packaging features, labelling and contents and report suspected cases of counterfeiting or piracy to the Food and Drugs Board or the police. Mr Kofi Asiamah, Packaging Quality Manager of Unilever Ghana Limited, called for a change in legislation regarding punishment and compensation imposed on counterfeiting offenders, saying the current law easily let culprits off the hook with very minimal fines and maximum imprisonment of five years. He said the country was faced with huge challenges and needed to put together every resource to combat counterfeiting and piracy of products.